


Unforseen Complications

by karrenia_rune



Category: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours | Around the World in Eighty Days - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phileas contracts a fever on their journey and Passepartout takes care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unforseen Complications

**Author's Note:**

> For Round 17 of the Live Journal based community Small Fandoms Fest

Disclaimer: Around the World in 80 Days is the original creation of Jules Verne.  
It is not mine. 

"Thirty Seven Degrees" by Karrenia

Passepartout berated himself silently; more than likely should have seen the early warning signs but he'd been too caught up in the moment to do so. 

He'd been aboard trains before but nothing like the one they had boarded in the American city. It whistled and blew like a great huffing beast, smoke whistling out of its smokestacks. 

His master had seemed indefatigable, like a prize racehorse full of a barely suppressed need to go, to do.

Although, he realized that his master, Phileas Fogg, had never been the type to take on any endeavor without through thought and preparation' he had been in deadly earnest when he'd taken on the wager from the gentleman at the Reform Club. He'd circumnavigate the known world and he would do so in only eighty days.  
Which left little room for sight-seeing or lolly-gagging, still he figured there might be some leverage for stopping every now and again to enjoy the finer things in life; alas to no avail. The man was much more of a dynamo than the train could ever hope to be.

The train as impressive as it seemed, nonetheless seem to lack something of the elegance of trains in his native Paris and those of his master's home back in England was not what had made him less than attentive than he should have been. No, it was the fact that they'd been attacked by masked and armed train robbers.

Passpepartout had staunchly and promptly defended his master, even perhaps displaying a bit more bravado and confidence in his own fighting abilities by using two silver-handled pistols instead of just one.  
Be that as it may, he was still faced with a bit of a dilemma. 

His master's eyes had become glazed and unfocused and he would stop in the middle of a sentence, pause, stare into space; perhaps at something that only he could see, and teeter over as if he were an aspen tree in a high stormwind.

When the other man finally collapsed he was there to catch him, and turning to the nearest passerby, asked directions in his heavily accented English to the nearest hostel or hospital.

Receiving eye-tracks, which he blissfully ignored, but armed with the information he required he carried his now semi-conscious master to the hostel. A low red-roofed establishment with rooms for rent. 

The hostel keeper did not question his need for a room or the fact that he'd paid in pounds; or the fact that he'd insisted that he did not know how long they planned on staying, perhaps two to three days at the outside. 

Once there Passepartout heaved his master onto one of the two beds and wondered where he could find water and perhaps a washcloth. Peeling back Phileas Fogg's eye-lids he realized with some trepidation that the other man had contracted a fever.

Following shortly on the heels of that particular notion came another rather unpleasant one; his hands were covered in blood and it wasn't his own. Undoing Mr. Fogg's cravat, shirt and rolling up his slacks he discovered that a fragment of a bullet had penetrated his master's left shoulder.

Wincing, he realized that barring outside medical help he would have to be the one to remove it. He had picked many skills in the course of his pursuit of service to great men, and basic medical knowledge had been one of them, but he could remove the bullet with his bare hands; now could he?

Aloud, "I realize that you are past hearing me, Sir, but I vow that I shall not rest until we have you hale and hearty again!"

Ripping pieces of his trailing sleeves to use as bandages he set these aside to look for water. which he found outside their room in a bucket of ice along with several pitchers lined up on a protruding shelf. "Oh Lady Fortune!" 

Passepartout exclaimed, with a sigh, "How fickle you are with one hand you giveth, and with the other you take away."  
Taking this unexpected he took rather more than the posted sign indicated, knowing that he would have to bring down the fever with repeated applications of wet cloths on his master's brow.  
Suiting action to thought, he poured and carried his load carefully back to their room.

Once there he began to wet the torn strips from his shirt and apply them, taking little heed of anything or anyone else, not even the passing of time. The ticking of the clock on the wall subsided into the all-consuming task of bringing Mr. Fogg back to full health.

Hours went by and there was still the matter of removing the bullet fragment. "Wait, think, idiot man! Think! He stumbled over their luggage, which he had gone back for, thankfully it was still on the railway platform where he had left it in his haste to get them both safely away.

He opened it and removed his sewing kit and removed a small tweezer; the kind that he'd once seen fancy ladies in Paris use to pluck and tease their eyebrows with; if it could be used to pluck eyebrows it could quite handily be used to remove bullet fragments; but he would have to be very careful and have extremely steady hands.

Passapertout gulped, his Adam's apple quivering in anticipation of what he would have to do. But, squaring his shoulders, he realized that there this was nothing for it. In the course of the evening and into the first blush of dawn creeping in through the windows of their room, the fever had come and gone, and come again. Much higher than the recommended thirty-seven degrees Celsius, much higher.

Phileas had tossed and turned in restless sleep, reaching out for something that was not there and if that fragment was not removed, well, he would rather not speculate what would happen then.  
Taking the tweezers and rolling his master gently onto his uninjured side.

The flesh around the entry point of the bullet was red and swollen and hot to the touch. Using as much haste as he dared Passepartout set to work, pulling with short, darting tugs, and throwing them with distaste into an empty snifter that he had set aside for that purpose. Once certain that he'd gotten every last fragment he went into the small lavatory and washed his hands with soap and water. 

Then he went back to check on Mr. Fogg. His color was much improved and he no longer twisted and turned. His breathing was also much better and when Passepartout rolled up the man's eyelids as he had once seen a doctor do with a fainting chamber-maid thankfully the glassy look in his master's eyes was gone.

Passepartout sighed, "With any luck, you'll be better, in say two, three days at the most and we'll be back on course again!" Sleep well, Sir!"  
With that he too collapsed on the other bed and was soon fast asleep. Tomorrow would indeed be a better day.


End file.
